Principles of Psychotherapy as Applied to General Practice.

Though in the time we have at our disposal there is much ground to be covered on a specific subject, it will be worth while just to take a very cursory glance at the histor;cal aspect of mental healing. The treatment of disease by mental means can be traced back to the earliest times. Its beginnings were of a mnagical nature and in the hands of the primitive medicine man, and later in those. of the priests. Magic and theology became inextricably confused, and in the dark Middle Ages the " laying on of hands," exorcism, and miraculous intervention were the procedures employed to combat mental ills as well as much bodily cisease. The superstitious credulity of those days is by no means non-existent now, and mankind is still actuated by the same mot;ves and emotions as he always has been. Doubtless it was because of the mystical atmosphere in which mental healing had always been surrounded that until comparatively lately the whole subject was hardly thought worthy of serious consideration by the medical profession. In the latter part of the' eighteenth century Mesmer, a Viennese doctor,, drew universal attention to his theory and practice of animal magnetism, or mesmerism as it came to be called. Though much of his work savoured of charlatanism it was through investigation of it that one form of psychotherapy became placed on a scientific bas;s. The theory of animal magnetism was negatived, and the phenomena of hypnotism, as it was later termed, were found to be the product of suggestion. Although the practce of hypnotism never became popular, there were medical men of repute who specialized in it in all the capital cities of Europe. The work of Charcot in Paris and that of Bernheim and others in Nancy gave the subject a stamp of respectability. The studies of Janet in this realm and his psychopathological contribution4 -mark him as a pioneer in our present-day psychotherapy. Hypnotic suggestion fell greatly into disuse, for it was found that curative results were so frequently as well obtained through simple suggestion alone. This method then held most sway, though a few employed what was known as rational psychotherapy or persuasion. About twenty years ago the psychological doctrines of Freud began. seriously to influence our ideas of mental medicine, to such a degree that the analytic approach 4o. mental disorder has now, to a vast extent, superseded all other forms.of psychotherapy. It was the Great War that gave such an impetus to interest in psychological medicine and methods, and in latter years it has become increasingly evident that the general practitioner must make up for the deficiency in his medical curriculum and gain